Hello fellow “Neavers!”

The name is Dave and I am new here on “Fin,” so go easy on me!

To give you a brief description of myself, I love movies. That is all.

So there seems to already be someone who reviews the new movies that open every weekend, and there also seems to be someone who lets you know the latest in movie news, so I will try this while I find my niche: Bad movie, Reviews.

Let’s start with a very detailed review of Battlefield Earth.

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

May 12, 2010 will mark the ten year anniversary of when the film, Battlefield Earth, was released in theaters. Ten years since the careers of many that worked on this film went down the toilet. More on that later. A film that was recently named, “Worst Movie of the Decade,” by The Razzie’s was directed by Roger Christian who never made a more memorable film before or after this one. Battlefield Earth is a film based on a novel by L. Ron Hubbard and stars John Travolta, Forest Whitaker, and Barry Pepper. Let’s first get the obvious out of the way: long live Xenu. Now we can move on to the review.

Things to know beforehand:

Acting – Atrocious

Dialogue – Atrocious

Casting – Atrocious

Cinematography – Atrocious

Score – Pretty decent!

The film starts with a big neon green title that says, “Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000.” Already you should know that this is a potential Oscar winner here.

So we fly through mountains where we meet our hero, Barry Pepper’s character, “Jonnie ‘Goodboy’ Tyler.” Yes, Goodboy. Jonnie is a warrior from a tribe that lives up in the cold mountains. He returns to the tribe to tell the chief that he must explore what is out beyond the tribe. The chief goes into a long and cheesy monologue about humans are an endangered species and must live on because of destiny. Jonnie ignores this because he is destined for bigger things, says his female companion, Chrissy, played by Sabine Karsenti. So Jonnie goes out to explore the world where he is attacked by two hunters. Somehow they become friends and the hunters take Jonnie to shelter. Here we see ruins of tall skyscrapers. In a thousand years, the only damage visible is some of the roofs have collapsed and weeds growing on the buildings. Huh?

I can survive the Apocalypse

So the hunters and Jonnie take shelter in an, “old,” subway station. There, they are attacked by a mysterious figure. Laser shots are fired so Jonnie begins to run away in a slow motion action sequence. He is then shot in the leg, which seems to have no affect on him. It’s a laser for gosh sakes! He then gets shot in the back and falls through plates of glass, in slow motion. Jonnie is then captured and taken on a ship to the “Human Processing Center” in what was once known as Denver, which is under a glass dome and buildings in ruins. As the captured humans are taken off the ship, one tries to escape but the alien creatures, which look like humans, more on that later, kills the escapee, in slow motion. This gives Jonnie the opportunity to shoot one of the guards and run because he saw the other guy just get killed, and he’s a main character so nothing too major can happen to him. So Jonnie gets shot yet again, and yet again, no damage.

Not Jonnie

This time, he falls in front of Terl, Chief of Security of the facility, played by none other than John Travolta. Here we meet another character who absolutely serves no purpose in the film, Ker played by Forest Whitaker. This is our first real look at the alien creatures. Apparently, Supercuts doesn’t exist in the future, but Uggs managed to survive and make fashionable boots for the aliens. The only difference between the humans and the aliens is: long hair, and big boots. Great looking aliens.

Fashionistas of the Future

Jonnie is taken to a jail where he is hosed down by aliens, in slow motion. There he gets into a fight with the “leader” of the jail, in slow motion. They become friends.

A teleportation device appears and teleports what seems to be a high official. Maybe he is a high official because he has white hair. The deal is for Terl to finally leave the “ugly” planet known as Earth and return to the homeworld of “Planet Psychlo,” yes, Planet Psychlo. A purple gas planet made up of lots of factories. Apparently, profits are down and Terl cannot leave duty on Earth. He must now stay for 50 more cycles. This makes Terl angry and needs to find a way out of the planet. So he comes up with a plan to stage an escape for the “human animals,” and make them mine gold to increase profits and that way he can finally leave Earth. So, he manages to capture Jonnie and take him to a room where he will learn the Psychlo language so they can communicate with each other. He is then left alone without supervision or even chained to the chair in which he is forced to learn the language. So, some of the other humans managed to break in and try to get Jonnie to snap out of it. He decides to stay and learn more. After he is done, he learns to read and speak the Psychlo language. This includes hacking into terminals to find out the secrets of the Psychlos. Didn’t Terl think of this when leaving him UNSUPERVISED?!

So Terl takes Jonnie and a group of humans to the mining facility. They have 14 days to mine gold, again unsupervised. This is where the humans come up with a plan to take down the Psychlos. This includes going to Ft. Knox to find gold to distract Terl for a few days, finding Ft. Hood to find weapons and learn how to use fighter jets. Yes, fighter jets. Primitive humans learn to fly fighter jets, that still work and have fuel after a thousand years, all in two weeks. I should say that the leader of the fighter jet squad is the bad guy from Kindergarten Cop.

Really?

The climax comes from the humans revolting against the Psychlos in crappy CGI, more slow motion, and blowing up the Psychlo’s home planet. Terl is captured and is left in Ft. Knox to stay forever. There seems to be no clear reason why he is left alive, then again the whole film has no clear anything.

There is so much wrong with this film that it really has to be seen to be fully explained. So many plot holes and bad acting, and if i were to go into everything that is wrong in this film, this review would be very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long. As I said in the beginning, careers of many that worked on the film, never recovered. This includes the director Roger Christian and screen writer J.D. Shapiro, who has not written a screenplay to make it to theaters again after Battlefield Earth. He recently did an interview on PopEater.com and was quoted for saying, “Sorry about that.” You should be.

• Fin